The King of Heroes: Gilgamesh in the anime and manga Fate
Keywords:
Gilgamesh, anime, manga, popular culture, reception of AntiquityCopyright (c) 2025 Abraham, I. Fernández Pichel, Víctor Sánchez Domínguez
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This article considers the role of Japanese anime and manga as essential vehicles of cultural transmission. These are forms of media which also allow for the analysis of the reception of Antiquity in contemporary popular culture. To this end, we address the case of the famous Gilgamesh, king of the city of Uruk in Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, who is also featured as a character in different creations of the multimedia franchise Fate. These fictional products show a remarkable reinterpretation of the historical character, who is now turned into an archetype of the sh?nen hero and, therefore, reworked according to the tastes and preferences of contemporary audiences, which
are mostly made up of teenagers.
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